Chapter 270: Death Of The Tsar

After the Spanish Government fully mobilized Portugal’s desire for merging West Africa and the Mozambique Colony, the Spanish Government took the initiative in the negotiations. It is worth mentioning that Portugal’s current King Louis also contributed to the colonial exchange negotiations between the two Iberian countries.

As King of Portugal, Louis could not resist the temptation of territorial expansion to obtain a large colony comparable to Brazil.

Even for Carlo, he similarly could not resist the temptation of territorial expansion. This not only could effectively enhance his reputation as king and consolidate his throne, but also bring him tangible profits visible to the naked eye.

The fundamental reason European Countries are enthusiastic about developing colonies is that the profits colonies bring are quite substantial.

For those colonies with little profit, governments abandon their colonial development and shift limited energy to more valuable lands.

Spain could choose from multiple colonies, while Portugal only had these two relatively large-scale colonies left; the other colonies were small and basically had little development value.

Under the covert guidance of the Spanish Government and the strong promotion by Portugal’s King Louis, Spain and Portugal reached an agreement on colonial exchange.

Spain would cease colonial activities south of the Congo Basin in the coming years and fully support Portugal’s colonial development in that region.

The region south of the Congo Basin had indigenous tribes and nations of various sizes; after Portugal occupied any indigenous nation there, the colonial exchange with Spain should begin.

Overall, Spain would exchange all lands south of the Congo Basin for Portugal’s several colonies in West Africa.

The lands Portugal abandoned included Portuguese Cacheu, Portuguese Guinea, Portuguese Viseu, and Portuguese São Tomé and Príncipe.

It could be said that, except for Cape Verde, Portugal abandoned all its lands in West Africa, placing all hopes on the merger of West Africa and Mozambique.

The reason Portugal was willing to abandon so much land was actually due to specific causes.

First, these lands Portugal abandoned were all small colonies, surrounded by other great powers’ colonies, making expansion or deep development very difficult.

Second, Portugal’s territory area and population were limited, and its experience in colonial development was also limited.

Even Spain could not develop several colonies simultaneously, let alone Portugal, whose population was only one-fifth of Spain’s.

For Portugal, it was certainly necessary to prioritize developing the West African Colony and Mozambique Colony. On this basis, Portugal’s willingness to abandon its several West African colonies was not surprising.

Cape Verde’s geographical position was still relatively important, and Portugal was unwilling to abandon all West African colonies at once, so the Portuguese Cape Verde was retained.

For Spain, such a land exchange agreement was completely acceptable. Once Portugal occupied any indigenous nation south of the Congo Basin, Spain could successively receive Portugal’s West African colonies.

In particular, Portugal’s Guinea and Ziguinchor Colony could be directly merged with Spain’s Gambia Colony; the merged Gambia Colony’s area would exceed 70,000 square kilometers, fully sufficient to be built into Spain’s granary.

Considering that Spain’s major actions in West Africa would attract the French’s attention or even wariness, Carlo specifically required the Portuguese Government, before the colonial exchange between both sides was completed, to keep the agreement between them as confidential as possible.

This coincided exactly with what Portugal’s King Louis thought. Compared to Spain annexing Portugal’s West African colonies, Portugal colonizing lands south of the Congo Basin was more challenging.

Portugal did not want to invite extraneous trouble; if confidentiality could be maintained, it would naturally create more opportunities for Portugal to promote the merger of the two colonies.

The good news was that an international event immediately attracted the attention of all European Countries. The minor actions between Portugal and Spain were naturally overlooked by other European Countries.

What was this international event? Of course, it was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in chaotic Russia.

For this tsar, posterity’s evaluation and the current evaluation were completely different. Posterity hailed Alexander II as a reformer and praised his reforms for extending Russia’s life by several decades.

But in Russia at this time, due to Russia not gaining major war spoils in the Russo-Turkish War, Alexander II’s reputation had already suffered intangible damage.

Those dissatisfied with the government redirected their hatred onto Alexander II’s head and frantically launched assassination after assassination against him.

From the end of the Russo-Turkish War to now, just a few years, the number of assassination attempts on Alexander II had already exceeded double digits.

Even with all sorts of defenses by Alexander II, the enemies’ assassinations kept changing tactics.

Sometimes explosives were buried under the tracks of Alexander II’s special train, sometimes bombs were thrown at the Winter Palace where Alexander II resided, and sometimes guns were used to ambush the convoy carrying Alexander II.

As early as 1880, the Winter Palace where Alexander II resided suffered severe sabotage. Saint Petersburg police captured 17 suspects related to the assassination; these 17 were directly sentenced to hanging, and their friends and family were permanently exiled to remote Siberia.

Such cruel sentencing not only failed to make these assassins shrink back but instead provoked retaliation after retaliation.

Finally, Alexander II was still assassinated. Although Saint Petersburg police strengthened security around the royal palace, and the tsar’s Guard dispatched troops to garrison inside the Winter Palace.

When the accident came, it was always so sudden; Alexander II was killed by an explosion in a way he had never imagined.

On March 13, 1881, Alexander II rode in a carriage from the palace to the government, preparing to attend a routine meeting.

But this itinerary was leaked in advance; when the convoy reached a street corner, a bomb was suddenly thrown under Tsar Alexander II’s carriage.

The good news was that this bomb caused no injury to the tsar. The bomb did not even overturn the carriage; apart from a slight delay, this assassination seemed to have no effect.

But Alexander II soon could not laugh anymore. As he angrily approached the assassin captured by the guards, another bomb was thrown directly at Alexander II.

Without the carriage’s protection, Alexander II was not as lucky as before; the bomb exploded quickly, and Alexander II was caught in the blast’s aftermath, suffering severe injuries.

Fortunately, Alexander II remained conscious; he was not directly killed by the bomb.

Unfortunately, the injuries caused by the bomb were beyond what this era’s medical technology could treat. Alexander II remaining conscious at this time became a torment; he had to endure the pain after being bombed, feel his body gradually weakening, and finally slowly lose consciousness.

When European Countries received the news, it was already the day after the assassination, March

For the God-fearing public in Europe, 13 was truly an unlucky number. Alexander II also died on the 13th; perhaps sometimes it could be attributed to fate.

As a monarch of a European Great Power, Alexander II’s death attracted the attention of European Countries.

For Austria, the death of reform-oriented Alexander II was absolutely good news. Russia’s reforms were already incomplete; after the emperor who mainly pushed reforms died, the reforms’ role would naturally be even lower.

Do not forget, Russia still had a large number of nobles. Abolishing serfdom had already offended many Russian nobles for Alexander II; would the new tsar risk further offending the nobles to advocate Alexander II’s reforms?

The tsar’s funeral was grandly held in Saint Petersburg, with basically all European Countries dispatching diplomatic representatives to participate in the tsar’s funeral.

Russia was still one of the world’s most powerful countries after all; the death of the Russian tsar was absolutely shocking news for Europe, especially such a death by assassination.

Of course, compared to the already deceased Tsar Alexander II, European Countries were more concerned with new Tsar Alexander III’s attitude.

Russia was an autocratic tsarist state, with the tsar possessing unparalleled power. After the tsar’s throne changed hands, would Russia’s diplomatic attitude undergo change?

Relations between Russia, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were already ambiguous; European Countries were speculating whether Germany’s Three Emperors Alliance would shatter.

The current change of Russia’s monarch undoubtedly made the direction of the Three Emperors Alliance even more unpredictable. The existence or not of the Three Emperors Alliance also concerned whether Europe’s situation could achieve relatively long-term peace.

European Countries were all speculating, but as a transmigrator, Carlo naturally knew Russia’s changes thereafter.

If Russia could persist with Alexander II’s reforms, even have the resolve to deepen them and promote comprehensive reform in Russia, Russia’s combat effectiveness might double.

But regrettably, due to his father’s quite painful tragic end, the succeeding Tsar Alexander III showed an ambiguous attitude toward reform.

He still supported his father’s reforms, but feared he too would be assassinated like his father.

Even his coronation ceremony was postponed until two years later, which was quite special among all European Countries.

Generally, after succeeding as king, the coronation ceremony is held within a year. Although one is already the country’s king after ascending the throne, the coronation ceremony’s role is to strengthen jurisprudence and declare the legitimacy of one’s rule.

Alexander III holding the coronation ceremony after two years also showed from this aspect that he was truly afraid of assassination.

Mainly because such assassinations were impossible to fully defend against; the assassins would launch them in all sorts of ways, and people always have moments of slack.

Out of courtesy, Spain dispatched the Foreign Secretary as representative to attend Alexander II’s funeral. Because the Spanish Royal Family and Russian Royal Family had no relations, Carlo naturally did not need to personally attend Alexander II’s funeral site.

Besides participating in Alexander II’s funeral, Spain dispatching the Foreign Secretary actually also wanted to reaffirm previous cooperation with the Russian Government, ensuring that cooperation between the two countries would not be affected by the tsar’s change.

What cooperation was there between Spain and Russia? Of course, cooperation regarding immigrants.

Although after the Russo-Turkish War ended, Russia had stopped purchasing Spain’s weapons and equipment, Spain had not stopped introducing immigrants from Russia.

Because Spain introduced immigrants by paying real gold and silver currency or other valuable industrial products and technical data, Russia was also happy to continue cooperating with Spain.

In the two years since the end of the Russo-Turkish War, Spain had cumulatively introduced over 50,000 immigrants from Russia, most of whom were transferred to Spain’s colonies to engage in agricultural work.

It had to be admitted that Russian farmers were also adept at agricultural labor. They had high stress resistance, were easily satisfied, and did not easily resist, making them one of the easiest groups to rule in the whole of Europe.

In the situation where Spain’s mainland could not bear large-scale outward immigrant export, introducing Russian immigrants became Spain’s only choice, and also the most suitable one.

Just a few days after the diplomatic representative arrived in Saint Petersburg, a piece of good news came back: the Russian Government would not change its diplomatic policy in the short term, and Spain could continue to introduce immigrants from Russia steadily in the coming years.

This was of course good news; after all, Spain’s development of West African colonies in the next few years required a large number of immigrants, and not all work was suitable for the colonies’ indigenous people; some work still needed proper European immigrants.

The local indigenous people in West Africa only needed to serve as cheap labor; their main use was for heavy physical labor with high mortality rates, while other work was to be left for immigrants.

After confirming that the Russian Government’s diplomatic attitude would not change much, Carlo became even more curious about Germany and Austria’s attitudes toward Russia.

Would the Three Emperors Alliance continue? Or would Russia lean toward France, with the two major military blocs forming in advance and engaging in even fiercer clashes?

To figure this out, Carlo required the Royal Security Intelligence Bureau to highly monitor the actions between the governments of Germany, Russia, and Austria; once the three governments held private secret meetings, it meant the Three Emperors Alliance was very likely to continue, with neither Germany nor Russia intending to leave the Three Emperors Alliance.

If there were no private meetings between the three governments, or even no exchanges between the German and Russian governments, then the Three Emperors Alliance was not far from dissolution.